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I'm trying to give a little more clarity to TTS sentences by indicating emphasis, etc. I'm using the Chrome TTS API, which indicates that it accepts SSML-formatted documents in addition to raw text.

After many attempts, and a reading a few comments on the web, it doesn't look like this is actually supported, or possibly that this is up to individual voices for implementation.

Does anyone know:

  • Has SSML been abandoned under Chrome?
  • If not, is there any indication whether they expect to support it via native voice, or they're hoping that someone else will implement?
  • Do any Chrome voices currently exist that support this?

Thanks!

idunno
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  • This is one of the only places I've seen information on TTS API in general, but it doesn't deal with the SSML issue and it's closed for comment: https://developers.google.com/live/shows/7320022-7001 -- also helpful would be any way of getting in touch with someone who might know the status of SSML in the TTS API. – idunno Nov 16 '13 at 11:38
  • I've been doing this on MacOS, both with regular Chrome and Canary -- the TTS works, but the SSML markup just reads out as text. I'm pretty sure I've tried this on both Win7 and ChromeOS, but I'll verify that now. – idunno Nov 16 '13 at 16:58
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    According to the docs, whether SSML is ignored or not depends on the ttsEngine used (and Chrome relies on the underlying OS for a tssEngine). The re is the option to install an extension to act as a ttsEngine, but I haven't found any available. I'm looking for a ttsEngine that supportes SSML - will report back if I have any success. – gkalpak Nov 16 '13 at 17:02

2 Answers2

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I'm a Chrome engineer. SSML support has not been implemented yet, but it's planned. Obviously not all engines would support it, but when we implement SSML support we'll also implement support for stripping SSML from engines that don't support it.

Sorry the documentation is misleading here.

Star this bug to express interest and get notified when it's fixed: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=88072

dmazzoni
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2

If anyone's looking at this later, you can control prosody on Mac Chrome using Apple's native command syntax, at least for the default voices:

the square root of [[pbas +4]] 2 [[char LTRL]]a[[char NORM]] to the [[pbas +4]] 14 [[char LTRL]]x[[char NORM]]

Documented here.

citelao
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